The Kid
by willywonka3435
Summary: House was in the middle of what he considered to be a relatively normal day when someone stumbled into the clinic who would change his life forever. He just didn't know it yet.
1. Chapter 1

House was in the middle of what he considered to be a relatively normal day when someone stumbled into the clinic who would change his life forever.

"Next idiot," he called from his position atop the examining bench itself, eyes never straying from the fascinating drama of General Hospital, and the door opened. Which, of course, had been what he expected. But then there was nothing but silence, and that had not been what he expected. He waited long enough to see the results of the pregnancy test—right, like those cheap things were even remotely accurate anyway—his curiosity got the best of him, and he spun around as gracefully as his leg permitted—which, all told, was not very gracefully at all. If he hadn't expected the silence, he definitely hadn't expected what he saw next.

There was someone perched on the doctor's stool, and it was not Wilson.

It was also not Cuddy, which was rather disappointing because she had worn her "I don't have any panties on" top that day.

Instead, this someone was not an adult at all but a teenager, and its eyes were currently fixed on the television much as House's own had been just moments ago. It did not make the slightest sound—not a murmur, not an "Excuse me, Doctor, I'm over here," not a peep, not even an exhale. House was tempted to see if It was still breathing, but he resisted the impulse. He said "Hey," for lack of anything better.

The someone turned around and studied him. Its eyes were a startlingly deep green, and they peered at him from beneath a fringe of thick black hair which desperately needed a trim and still remained oddly cute. House realized the somone was a female of Its species; then he thought that was strange because it was unadorned—not a spiky wristband, hideous bow, or tube of pink lip gloss in sight, just a cheap silver watch, a cross on a chain around Its neck, and a wary grass-green gaze. "So you like this show?" he said, surprising himself. Small talk he did not make with patients. He did not even make it with Cameron, and if anybody deserved small talk she did.

"Never seen it before," It said. "What's it called?"

"General Hospital," said House, and ignored the temptation to ask It if Its head had been under a rock for the past decade.

"Don't they know you can't trust those things?" said It, indicating the stick, which was now being cried over and handled as though it hadn't just been peed on. "Probably couldn't detect fertilization in a cloning factory."

House began thinking something very out-of-the-ordinary. He wondered how it felt to like someone again.

"What's your poison?" he asked instead.

"Feeling a bit woozy," It said, suddenly shy and standing up. House noticed It was careful not to put weight on Its right leg. "Got worse lately."

"Let me guess—you sprained your ankle getting drunk with your pals and couldn't bring yourself to tell your Mum," House said, feeling rude.

"Huh?" said It, honestly surprised, and glanced down. It looked as though It was seeing Its injury for the first time. "Oh, no," It said, "that's nothing, that's not the problem."

House snickered. "Then stand on it," he said.

"Why?" It asked, paling rather abruptly.

"Because I want you to prove that you're not lying. Everybody lies, you know."

"Sure," It said, white as Dracula. House waited patiently and watched, settling in for some prime entertainment. After sucking in a very dramatic deep breath, It lowered Its foot even more dramatically to the disgustingly grimy floor. Then It clenched Its teeth and shifted Its weight to the injured limb. House knew what was going to happen, but regardless, he hadn't been fully prepared. Its eyes clouded with pain; House understood that; Its knee bent at an unnatural angle, and It fell forward. It hit Its head on the counter and was unconscious. Just like that.

Well, there was a sickening crack too, but House couldn't really hear that over the soap.

The chain broke and the cross skittered like a drunken cockroach across the tile. House stared until it came to rest facedown beneath the stool. There was something wrong, he thought. Something wrong about the situation. For a moment, this bothered him.

Then he remembered this was just a wasted teenager and it was Cameron's job to care. He turned back to the TV and, as an afterthought, punched the call button by the bed with one finger. The fat nurse on duty came in a few minutes later, all fluttering hands and exaggerated sympathy; It was carted away before the end of the show. House figured he'd never lay eyes on the layabout again, called "Next idiot!" and wondered about the sex of the kid that would probably be stillborn anyway.

But he was wrong. Oh boy, was he wrong.

Not about the stillbirth, though—about the other part.


	2. Chapter 2

The next afternoon, House was reclining—or attempting to recline—atop the examining bench in Room 173, watching TV and munching on Wilson's Doritos. Wilson sat across from him, glaring at him between commercial breaks and sending him a fusillade of subliminal messages which read quite clearly "I really wish you would either buy your own Doritos or choke on one of mine so I would be able to eat my own food again." House ignored Wilson. He was more concerned about the fate of the pregnancy; the pregnant woman in question had fallen recently and there had been a disgusting and relatively familiar squishing noise, which did not bode well for the hairless inhabitant—or inhabitants, should it come to that—of the woman's abdomen.

Just as the Downy bear began dancing across the television screen, House took a large bite of Wilson's Reuben (which, incidentally, he knew very well Wilson had purchased with him in mind; Wilson hated Reubens) and said, "I hate that bear, you know."

"You hate everything cute and fuzzy and good," Wilson remarked, still glaring at him. "It's some kind of complex."

"You think _that's_ 'cute and fuzzy and good'?" House repeated, gesturing to the animal. "You're the one with a complex."

"Yet I'm not the one who convinced myself my leg was hurting because I'm such a terrible masochist," said Wilson.

House thought Wilson was more upset over the chips than previously assumed.

"Sorry," said Wilson.

"Wimp," said House, and they were friends again.

And then the door opened, and it wasn't Cuddy. It was, however, Cameron, and she was quite angry. But while "angry" for most people should inspire at least a touch of fear, Cameron's state of anger was "couldn't fight her way out of a wet paper bag with a meat cleaver," so House was not threatened at all. Neither, needless to say, was Wilson. In fact, he was smirking. House wasn't sure why he was smirking, aside from his usual insanity, until he looked at the object Cameron was currently holding aloft in her left hand and realized it was his boxers.

Odd, he thought idly, he could've_ sworn_ he'd been wearing those.

"_Why_ were these on my desk?" Cameron said.

"I don't think that's the most relevant question here," House said.

"And what would the most relevant question here be, then?"

"The most relevant—is there an echo in here?—question would be 'Why aren't you cradling those to your heart and inhaling their manly fragrance like a madly-crushing schoolgirl?'"

Wilson winced and made, as inconspicuously as possible, the face he always made when he was trying not to laugh.

"Oh, shut up," Cameron sighed, tossed the boxers in House's general direction, and left. She slammed the door and knocked the boxers themselves from their precarious position dangling on the cabinet where they'd landed; they fell two feet and draped over Wilson's eyeballs; he reached up with one hand and plucked them gingerly away from his face, where he really thought they should not have been in the first place. He wasn't even sure why they were in his hand and not under House's pants where they belonged.

Instead, he ran a finger down the left leg. "Silk?" he said, and coyly raised his eyebrows.

"It makes me _horny_," House said.

"Do your 'Mini-Me's know about this?"

"What, the silk or the boxers? The silk, no. The boxers, not yet, but they will as soon as Little Miss I-Love-Dying-People gets within twenty feet of them."

"Gimme the Doritos," said Wilson.

"But I loves 'em! They're my precious! My precious!" said House, and futilely clutched the crumpled bag to his chest.

"Oh, come on, you hate that movie; now give me the chips, or I'll make sure the whole _floor_ knows Greggy-Weggy likes the feel of silk against his unmentionables. And that _includes_ the nurses' station."

"Pretend you know how to have fun," House said, threw the chips at Wilson, received a very terrible boxer-toss in return, and faced the set. "Shut up," he said, "show's on." And Wilson's pager went off, just in time for House to miss the words of the doctor as he came back in to the room of the woman with the baby, who was sprawled sexily in her hospital bed with a sleep-mask over her temporarily sightless eyes. "Idiot," House said, and then the door opened again.

Before he saw the identity of this new perpetrator, House said, "I don't want to hear from you if you are Chase, because I already know you want me with the heat of a thousand suns; I don't want to hear from you if you are Foreman, because you should be out breaking into Stacey's house like the little convict you are and not here annoying me; I don't want to hear from you if you are Cameron, back to complain about my boxers, because you know why they were there and I know you did not forget what we were up to last night because those squeals meant you were having too good of a time to _ever_ forget; and I don't want to hear from you if you are Cuddy, because I told you we are _over_, _girlfriend_, and you can wave those breasts of yours at me all you like, that's still not gonna change."

"It's Susan," said Wilson, as he got up.

"Susan what?" said House; it was his turn to glare, because he had no idea what Wilson was talking about.

"It's Susan," Wilson said again. "Susan, not Stacey."

"Don't you have a bald kid to attend to?" House asked, and then the actual door-opener stepped forward shyly. It was It. "Oh my _Gawd_, it's It," House said.

"What?" said It.

"Your name," House said.

"What?" said It, rather cluelessly. Wilson rolled his eyes. House thought that if there were any of the blond, busty nurses around, they would have swooned. Then he thought that if they had, Wilson would have caught them, and that made him want to roll his _own_ eyes. Luckily, he resisted the urge.

"It's your name. I've renamed you It," he said. "Don't worry, I've named worse."

TBC, if anyone's interested.  Please let me know if you are.


	3. Chapter 3

**A/N: People actually reviewed. That rocks.**

**Okay, first things first. I don't like flames, but I don't need to say that because I haven't had any. Thank you very much for the detailed review, Forgottengargoyle, I really appreciate it (as I appreciate the others, too, of course). I did decide to give It a name to make things easier all round; I'll work on my description; I did write that line you mentioned and then look back at it and say "Oh, geez," and I've (wisely) taken it out; and thanks for the bit about the cross.**

**I hope everybody keeps reading this. I'm actually enjoying myself. **

**(The chapter's short. Sorry.)**

Wilson continued to glare at him, more pointedly this time. House sighed. "Okay." He took a deep breath, partially for fortification, partially for sheer dramatic effect, and said, "What's your—ahem—name?"

"Katie," said Katie.

"Krystal, right," said House.

"Forget it," said Wilson, and left.

"So what do you want this time?" That was House.

"Well," It said, and paused, "I fainted last time I was here."

"Because you sprained your ankle. What else is new?"

"A woman told me I should come back and see you again. She said—er, she said you might 'find my case interesting.'"

House grinned. "You remember her name?"

It thought for a moment. "Rhymed with 'Buddy' and 'Fuddy-duddy'…"

"Did she have breasts you could eat a three-course meal off?"

"Um…"

"Let me guess. You're a _girl_, you don't _notice_ that kind of thing, that would just be _wrong_."

"Er… actually, I think she did have the breasts you mentioned."

House's grin became a full-fledged evil smirk. If Wilson had been there to see it, he would have run. "And why, exactly, did she say your case was 'interesting'? Because I have dying people to save, a whole nurses' station to reduce to tears, a pet store full of puppies to kick, and a galaxy to terrorize."

It swallowed. "Well—maybe you should talk to her. I mean, she seemed to know what she was talking about."

"And you don't? It _is_ you she was talking about, Caitlin, I assume, and not your evil twin sister. And if I had a dime for every time I heard _that_ story from some bipolar freak whose other personality had syphilis, I'd have… a dime. No, two dimes. Got another one yesterday."

"House," said Cuddy, who was currently standing in the doorway, "I need to speak to you."

"Those pesky lawsuits again?"

"Just come here," Cuddy said, and looked remarkably serious. Her blouse, on the other hand, was very low-cut and completely ruined the effect. House shrugged.

"Sorry, Christine," he said, "be back in a few." He glanced at the muted TV. "Change the channel and die," he added. Then he was gone.

Katie waited until the door shut behind the doctor—what had his name been? Yes, House, that was it—before she sat in the exact same seat his friend had vacated, tucked her feet uncomfortably into the rungs of the stool, and began to think. She wasn't sure what to do.

Aside from the fact that the man with the cane could not seem to remember her name, was a snotty, cranky, old coot who thought he was some kind of god, and spent his days—or what she'd seen of them—obsessing over General Hospital, he wasn't bad compared to the sort of person with whom she was used to associating. Actually, she continued, reconsidering, that wasn't quite true. But she was sick, and when she'd lain on her bed staring at the hole in the ceiling, trying not to hyperventilate again, the first words that came to her mind had been "Princeton-Plainsboro Teaching Hospital."

No, that wasn't quite true either. The first words that had come to her mind were more along the lines of "Oh my God, I'm going to die." The hospital idea arrived a bit later, after she was able to inhale sufficiently and no longer feared a sudden encounter with the Reaper, and Princeton-Plainsboro had simply been the closest to her current location. So she'd left, and the clinic had seemed the best place to go.

She poked her head between her knees and studied the floor. Her cross was gone, and she figured she knew where it'd been lost; that was the reason she'd headed for the same room, not a search for the scruffy-faced doctor, not to carry a message from the woman with "breasts you could eat a three-course meal off," but to find it. She missed having it next to her heart. It was comforting, somehow. It was—ah, there it was, she thought, and reached out. Her fingers closed around the cross, her vision clouded, and she slumped forward. The last thing she remembered before falling completely unconscious was the silver against her skin.

It was hot.


	4. Chapter 4

**A/N: Thanks for all the great reviews! I love hearing what people think of what I have to say.**

**Anyway, I actually have _no_ idea what Katie has, because I started the story out thinking one thing was going to happen and then the story kinda changed itself around and now I'm not sure what's going to happen at _all_. Right now I'm just putting my fingers on the keyboard. We'll see.**

"Are you all right?"

Katie blinked slowly—very slowly, much more slowly than she thought she should have been blinking under the circumstances—and opened her eyes. There was something soft under her back. She must've been moved off the floor. The floor, to say the least, had not been soft.

"Are you all right?" the voice asked again, in an accent that was distinctly Australian—Melbourne, perhaps, Katie thought, but she really had no idea—and Katie squinted until the voice's face swam into focus. The next thing she thought was, "Oh boy, I got the pretty doctor." Then she blacked out again. She didn't realize that the cross was still clutched in her fist, or that its shape remained branded in the pale flesh of her palm. She only realized that wow, did the doctor's hair look hot falling over his eyes that way. Unfortunately, that observation was completely unrelated to her problem. But it was okay, because she was unconscious.

---

Chase shrugged and didn't think much of anything at all, other than the brief moment of time in which he pondered whether or not that flash in the girl's eyes had been _lust_—lust at her age; now that was just creepy. Cameron rushed down the hallway outside breathing hard and he wondered if those had been boxers he'd seen in her hand earlier. Who had she been kissing? He inspected his emotions idly—could he possibly bring himself to feel the remotest twinge of jealousy—decided he could not, and headed out to the main area of the clinic. There was a limp teenage girl on the examining bench, there was—currently—no attending physician in a five-mile vicinity, there was a very poorly scripted soap opera running on the television, there were wood chips from his latest pencil stuck painfully between his molars, and he was still trying to think of a six-letter word for "dumb."

---

House stood facing Cuddy in her office, the place to which he had—very unwillingly—been coerced. She was breathing somewhat heavily and her breasts were bouncing in a fashion that said they were not quite heaving yet, but after some additional exertion they might start that direction.

"I have to talk to you," she said.

"What was your first hint?" he said.

She ignored him. _That_ was nothing unusual. "It's about the patient."

"Which patient?" he said. "I got loads. It's 'cause I'm a doctor, you know."

"The one in room 173," she said.

"The one with the sprained ankle?"

"A sprained ankle?"

"It's when you—" House began, in his most annoying, patronizing tone, ready to launch into a lovely and very disturbing speech, but she raised a well-manicured hand and cut him off. He thought about something he had learned awhile ago—that the only people who kept their nails that neat were not getting any—but he couldn't pursue the idea any further, though it led to some very intriguing fantasies, because she opened her mouth again. She had a bad habit of doing that.

"She doesn't have a sprained ankle."

"Funny, I thought _I_ was the diagnostician here. Says that on my door, after all."

"Sprained ankles do not make people faint," Cuddy said.

"Really? But _pain_ makes them faint," House said, "and she was standing on it at the time."

"The hospital has been quarantined!" Cuddy yelled. "Didn't you notice the rushing around, the cops, the news anchor?"

At this, he was taken aback, but he refused to show it. "Did the white rats get loose in the heating vents again?"

"For the last time, there is _no_ animal testing—oh, forget it. She does not have a sprained ankle, she has the _plague_, and as far as I know, you—as well as the rest of the hospital and the rest of the country—are not immune," said Cuddy, and looked remarkably proud of herself for a woman who had just doomed the state to illness and a very likely death. House felt his stomach fall to a place where it definitely did not belong.

"And you need a diagnostician here for—?" he said instead, and waited to hear her response. In a manner highly untrue to form, they had—thus far—been interesting.


End file.
